Cloud Computing Storms
Stephen Biggs and Stilianos Vidalis
Information Operations Research Group,
University of Wales, Newport, UK
stephen.biggs@students.newport.ac.uk, stilianos.vidalis@newport.ac.uk
Abstract
Cloud Computing (CC) is seeing many
organisations experiencing the ‘credit crunch’,
embracing the relatively low cost option of CC to
ensure continued business viability and sustainability.
The pay-as-you-go structure of the CC business model
is typically suited to SME’s who do not have the
resources to completely fulfil their IT requirements.
Private end users will also look to utilise the colossal
pool of resources that CC offers in an attempt to
provide mobile freedom of information. However, as
with many opportunities that offer legitimate users
enormous benefits, unscrupulous and criminal users
will also look to use CC to exploit the loopholes that
may exist within this new concept, design and business
model. This paper will outline these loopholes and
attempt to describe the perfect crime conducted within
a cloud environment.
1. Introduction
Computer crime is a lucrative activity that
continues to grow in its prevalence and frequency
[1][2][3][4]. This statement is the reality behind any
new technology, whereby legitimate users are
compromised by those seeking to benefit in
unscrupulous ways, usually, though not entirely, for
financial gain. Rogers and Seigfried [4] suggest, ‘the
increase in criminal activity places a strain on law
enforcement and government agencies.’ Statistics
suggest that over the past few years cyber-criminal
activity has increased dramatically. More and more
Law Enforcement agencies around the world are forced
to adapt the techniques they employ, in order to be able
to cope with the rapid change in the nature of the
crimes they are charged with investigating. During
2009, the authors conducted a survey of the High Tech
Crime Units (HTCU’s) around the UK, with the results
clearly indicating that the current practice of
investigating cloud facilitated cyber-crime is outdated
and fundamentally wrong.
The shift from document-based evidence to
electronic-based evidence has necessitated a rapid
change in the current practice, but that change on its
own is not enough. Digital forensics and the many
principles and guidelines by which digital forensic
investigators throughout the world abide, can vary to
some degree, though the underlying principles are very
similar. The very backbone of the forensic community
however, is being tested at present and the authors
believe that the digital community and more
importantly, the law enforcement agencies of the UK
are not yet prepared for the potential rise in cloud
facilitated cyber-crime. This concept is fuelling debate
globally, with many UK Police chiefs ignoring the
warnings. This is fundamentally wrong and could
result in catastrophic consequences being felt locally,
nationally and globally. The major developments in the
world of computing in the last 5 years have only
exacerbated the poor decision making of high ranking
law enforcement officers.
According to Gartner Consulting [5], ‘investigating
inappropriate or illegal activity may be impossible in
cloud computing.’ Gartner [5] warns: ‘Cloud services
are especially difficult to investigate, because logging
and data for multiple customers may be co-located and
may also be spread across an ever-changing set of
hosts and data centres.’ Heterogeneous and distributed
large scale virtual computing infrastructures therefore,
to which the cloud environment belongs, is the focus of
the research being conducted. If there are no
contractual commitments to support specific forms of
investigations then investigations and discovery
requests are likely to be impossible.
Treacy and Bruening [6] state; ‘Cloud Computing
is not clearly defined.’ This statement evidently relates
to the many guises in which cloud computing can
appear, with many vendors vying for a competitive
market share that will ensure company growth and
sustainability. The cloud model can vary somewhat
between each of the many vendors that have identified
a lucrative market, from which they want a sizeable
share. Dastigr [7] suggests, most high profile vendors
will provide a professional and safe cloud computing
environment, however, many unscrupulous businesses
and underworld providers may look to exploit the need
for cloud services and offer cut price deals in order to
attract business. The authors somewhat disagree with
Dastigr, where the push by vendors for cloud customer
supremacy, may outweigh the responsibilities vendors
have as opposed to their profit margins. Evidence
shows that law enforcement agencies in the UK,
strongly believe that organised crime and other types
of threat agents are already using heterogeneous large
scale distributed virtual computing infrastructures for
conducting a wide variety of cyber-crimes.
The fear then is that obtaining artefacts of
evidential value from such environments is virtually
impossible.
This paper will describe what happens, how it
happens and when it happens from the perspective of
an
investigator
performing
digital
forensic
investigations within the United Kingdom, based on
the primary research conducted as part of the
CLOIDIFIN research project [8]. The authors will also
attempt to describe the perfect crime conducted in a
cloud environment and also define cloud storms.
2. Digital Investigations
Digital investigators in the UK abide by the
guidelines laid down by the ‘Association of Chief
Police Officers (ACPO) Good Practice Guide for
Computer-Based Electronic Evidence’ [9]. These
guidelines provide information necessary to ensure
investigations are performed to high exacting
standards. Within those guidelines there are four key
principles regarding computer based electronic
evidence [9]. ACPO further states that: ‘In order to
comply with the principles of computer based
electronic evidence, wherever practicable, an image
should be made of the entire target device.’ This
however is becoming more and more impractical,
where devices can now store many TB of data at very
low cost. The ACPO advice here is: ‘Partial or
selective file copying may be considered as an
alternative in certain circumstances e.g. when the
amount of data to be imaged makes this impracticable.’
Digital evidence is, by its very nature, extremely
fragile. It can be altered, damaged, or destroyed by
improper handling or examination. For this reason it is
imperative that precautions are taken to document,
collect, preserve and examine evidence of this type. A
failure here can render a case inadmissible in court,
with many hours of investigation wasted as a result [9].
Vacca [10] states: ‘Computer forensics is the
principle of reconstructing the activities leading to an
event and determining the answers to ‘What did they
do?’ and ‘How did they do it?’ The many varying
definitions
however,
all
conclude
that
computer/digital/cyber-forensics is the science of
proving what has happened previously, how it
happened, where it happened and who made it happen.
Digital forensics has had to endure a continuous
evolutionary process to maintain a level playing field
with the perpetrators of cybercrime over recent years.
That process must continue at pace to ensure that
investigators are armed with the appropriate up-to-date
tools and knowledge to continue their battle as newer
and more complex ways of facilitating those crimes are
created.
Traditional forensic methodologies permit the
investigators to seize equipment and conduct their
investigation from the relative security of a lab
environment. This is known within the digital forensics
field as ‘dead analysis’ and is still judged as the
industry standard practice for the forensic investigator.
The tools used by an investigator can also vary,
with each tool performing in similar ways, yet
preferences can occur by the very nature in the way
they perform tasks. The most common tools an
investigator may use include: EnCase by Guidance
Software [11], Forensic Tool Kit by Access Data [12]
and Helix3 [13] which is an open source tool kit. There
are many others, though the three highlighted are the
most commonly used and industry accepted tools [8].
These tools are extremely powerful and can locate
artefacts of evidential value, even if the suspect has
deleted the data that is considered compromising.
E-discovery and live forensics are two evolving
areas of digital forensics that an investigator can add to
their portfolio of weapons to combat e-crime. The
term e-discovery carries many definitions, yet for the
purposes of this paper, it is defined as: ‘Electronic
discovery (e-discovery or eDiscovery) refers to any
process in which electronic data is sought, located,
secured, with the intent of using it as evidence in a
civil or criminal legal case.’ E-discovery can be carried
out offline on a particular computer or it can be
performed on a network. EnCase have launched their
own eDiscovery [11] suite and this is yet another
powerful tool available to law enforcement agencies in
their fight against cybercrime.
Live forensics is another method in the fight against
cybercrime, which is the means and technique of
obtaining artefacts of evidential value from a machine
that is running at the time of analysis. This could
prove pivotal in cases where evidence is obtained from
the machines volatile Random Access Memory (RAM)
for instance.
3. Cloud Computing
In recent years, desktop computing has traditionally
seen users run copies of software programs on every
computer they own and use. All of the files created by
those software programs are stored on the local
machine that created them or the network to which
they are connected. If a computer is connected to a
network, the other machines connected to that network
can share those files, yet computers beyond that
network will have no access to the data.
Cloud computing is software that runs not on PC’s
or company servers but instead on computers and
servers available on the Internet. The cloud offers
private end-users and companies of all sizes a colossal
pool of resources at remote locations without the need
to invest in their own hardware and software
infrastructure. Miller [14] states: ‘Key to the definition
of cloud computing is the “cloud” itself. For our
purposes, the cloud is a large group of interconnected
computers. These can be personal computers or
network servers; they can be public or private.’
Although there has yet to be collaboration from the
IT community on a specific definition for cloud
computing, Menken [15] concurs: ‘Cloud computing
can be defined as the use of computer technology that
harnesses the processing power of many internetworked computers while concealing the structure
behind it.’ The cloud concept of virtualisation and
remote access may prove to be a difficult paradigm for
some users, yet the concept is seen by many as the next
epochal technological milestone, in what has already
seen rapid advances in computing since Gordon E.
Moore made his prediction in an Electronics Magazine
article: ‘Cramming more components onto integrated
circuits’ in 1965. The data created by cloud
applications are stored at many remote data centres
worldwide. The companies at the forefront of this new
cutting edge concept include, Amazon, Google,
Salesforce, Yahoo and Microsoft. The vendors state
that the data are secure and are backed up in the event
of a catastrophic event at any of their data centre
locations, therefore, appealing to the security conscious
users within the digital information community.
Cloud computing therefore, offers users the ability
to access their documents, , applications, images and
movie files, from any device capable of connecting to
the Internet, from virtually anywhere in the world.
With this concept, the inevitability is that it will grow
and grow, as users become more independent from
their traditional desktop machines and require
portability, coupled with the ability to share all their
data resources with whomever, whenever and wherever
they choose. The concept also allows business users to
move away from the office space and perform their
daily tasks at remote locations. With the advent of 3G,
the third generation enabled network, offering cloud
access from virtually any location in the world,
facilitating that movement whilst maintaining an
Internet connection to the data required for everyday
tasks.
4. Cloud Computing Concerns
Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) must be robust
if they are to be effective in combating cybercrime.
For example, hacking, distributed denial of service
(DDOS) attacks, phishing, pharming, distribution of
malware, viruses, trojans, spyware and worms will test
the resilience of cloud vendors to rebuff such attacks
and how they deal with the perpetrators of such crimes.
SLA’s also highlight that the promotion and facilitation
of child pornography or other illegal activities will
contravene policy and agreement and the law, yet
policing such activity and making those cyber
criminals culpable will also test the ways in which
vendors monitor this type of activity.
The inevitability however, that with new
technologies will come new ways of facilitating old
crimes and/or the creation of new crimes is a sobering
reality. Vendors must ensure that their agreements
evolve at a suitable pace. They must also ensure that
their policies do not just act as a smoke screen,
policing the conditions laid down is imperative if the
cloud is not going to become a harbour for the criminal
underbelly that will look to exploit any weaknesses.
Vendors must liaise with law enforcement agencies in
an attempt to minimise the impact that cloud
technology will have on vendor credibility and law
enforcement involvement. The path ahead is uncharted
and what happens may have significant consequences
if the relationship is not sound.
It is believed that many of the vendors of cloud
computing may not have fully encompassed the issues
surrounding the usage of the cloud. The inevitability
that unscrupulous users will identify and exploit any
weaknesses that the cloud model possesses is a stark
reality. Vendors, in their quest to secure a lucrative
market share may have undermined the possibilities of
attack and misuse of their cloud resources. The
likelihood that the creation, storage, processing and
distribution of illicit material will present major legal
issues, is also a grave reality. The problems that will
arise from cross-border legislation, due to the many
locations of cloud data centres, coupled with the
potential for data to be stored across those centres has
the potential to impact significantly on the digital
investigator and their ability to conduct effective
investigations. The race to envelop that market share
may be driven at a pace where critical issues are dealt
with retrospectively and not given sufficient forward
thinking throughout the development stage.
The biggest fear for many users of the cloud model
is security. Presscott [16] questions: ‘Why aren’t
enterprises falling over themselves to buy and use
cloud services?’ In the survey of over 170 businesses,
more than 50% were concerned about the security
issues surrounding the use of cloud resources. Many
of the vendors claim to be investing huge sums to
ensure data security both digitally and physically at
their data centres. However, the old adage that nothing
is 100% secure remains a real and possible threat to
data integrity. The premise that risks can NOT be
eliminated completely, yet can be minimised to an
acceptable level is how users of cloud services must
view their usage strategies.
Espiner [17] warns, ‘Cloud-computing services are
on the rise but the security around them is not yet
mature enough to trust…’ This appears to be a
common thread among security experts, whereby they
warn that insufficient investment and the desire by
vendors to subscribe vast quantities of users into their
cloud may hamper the security issues associated.
Mansfield-Devine [18] comments and questions:
‘Cloud computing is hot, but are we running ahead of
our ability to ensure a secure environment? If you are
smart, you have invested significant resources in
securing the perimeter of your organisation. You feel
safe behind the firewalls, DMZ’s, VPN’s and fiercely
enforced policies. Then along comes cloud computing
and suddenly your users are keeping valuable and even
business-critical data outside the perimeter, beyond
your control…’
It is this concept of going against all security
foundations of the recent past that cloud vendors are
asking users to encompass and trust. John B. Horrigan
[19] of the PEW Research Center, a non-profit “fact
tank”, in September 2008 conducted research titled
‘Use of Cloud Computing Applications and Services’.
Horrigan (2008) states that, ‘Cloud computing takes
hold as 69% of all internet users have either stored data
online or used a web-based software application.’
From this information, it can clearly be seen that the
inevitable expansion and global acceptance of cloud
services will pressurise further law enforcement
agencies and investigators already inundated with huge
workloads. The Confidentiality, Integrity and
Availability (CIA) model of information security is
going to be pushed to the ultimate test where cloud
computing is concerned.
The questions posed by Hobson [20] raise major
issues over ‘Confidentiality’. When using cloud
services, Hobson implies, and then asks: ‘If you are
giving your data to a third party, you have no control
over it. So who have you given it to? What is the
access to the data? Who sees it? Can it be taken and
used by someone else? Who administers this? What
assurance do you have that your data is confidential?
Are you happy with a contractual warranty? If so,
what is your recourse if the contract is breached?’
Hobson expands these questions to ‘Integrity’ and
asks: ‘Are you convinced as to the integrity of your
data? Can it be tampered with? If it was tampered
with, would you know? – Most people would not. Are
you satisfied with the segregation of data? What is the
chance of “leakage” and how is this protected and
tested?’
He finalises his comments on the CIA model with
‘Availability’. Hobson suggests that if your data is not
available to you, for whatever reason, then it is
rendered useless. What must be considered here is that
in the United States, any data leakage or compromise
of personal data, relevant authorities must be informed
within a given timescale, even if the data was
encrypted. This varies slightly from state to state, yet
it is believed that this type of accountability will be
encompassed in the future in the UK and possibly the
rest of the EU. This imposes a requirement on the
vendor to inform the user of the cloud resources of any
compromise of data, yet the knowledge of that
compromise lies solely with the cloud vendor, until
such a time that the user is made aware.
One such security breach is currently being
investigated. Rao [21] writes: ‘The Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC) has asked the Federal Trade
Commission to investigate the privacy and security
measures of Gmail, Google Docs and Google’s other
“cloud computing” services for consumers.’ Rao [21]
highlights that a recent security breach at Google
surrounding Google Docs is a stark reminder that
putting consumers’ data in the cloud, could have dire
consequences. The sound resonating from the research
to date is that the future is uncertain and what lies
ahead with cloud security issues will be a topic for
continued debate for some time to come.
A major issue from a legal perspective is one that
may have been overlooked by both vendor and user.
The legislation surrounding the location of digital data
storage and its relation to the user location can leave
users, vendors and investigators with issues of
compliance and from an investigators point of view,
serious cross-border red tape with which to deal with.
Warwick Ashford [22], writing for Computer Weekly
in December 2008 comments: ‘Regulatory or legal
requirements are often forgotten, and this can expose
businesses using cloud computing to unnecessary risk
says Andrew Scott, partner at law firm Dickinson
Dees.’ The Data Protection Act, for example, requires
businesses to control the way personal data is
processed and stored, but this is extremely difficult
with cloud computing, says Scott. It is also unlikely
that businesses will have any of the control they need
over where the data is stored or have any real
assurances that no data is left behind after the contract
ends.
The ‘European Directive on Data Protection’ [23]
which encompasses all the key issues of article 8 of the
European Convention on human rights, has been
reviewed by the Information Commissioners Office,
who in 2008 called for a re-examination of the EU
Directive, which will include promoting and
supporting legislative change. The report suggests: ‘In
the 13 years since the Directive came into force, the
world has seen dramatic changes in the way personal
data is accessed, processed and used. At the same
time, the general public has become increasingly aware
of the potential for their data to be abused.’
The major concern however, that UK law
enforcement agencies will want to monitor closely, is
the use of CC by paedophiles. Sadly, this type of
crime accounts for between 70%-80% of an
investigator’s workload and the cloud could prove to
be a haven that the paedophile may wish to exploit to
fulfil his heinous needs. If data content is not
monitored by cloud vendors, then this type of remote
storage and relative anonymity of the cloud account
holder, may further stretch law enforcement resources
beyond breaking point. Couple this with the crossborder legislation and red tape that an investigator may
encounter, many of these crimes will go unpunished if
this is exploited by people fulfilling their needs by
child exploitation. The authors believe it would be
possible to conduct paedophile activities anonymously
and without trace to the device accessing the images
within the cloud.
5. Cloud Storms
Cloud storms can be defined as the issues that arise
from the concerns raised in the previous chapter. The
definition of storm offers several meanings, dependent
on what scenario is being referred to. The Oxford
English Dictionary (2010) defines the term “storm” as:
‘A violent disturbance of the atmosphere.’ Or to ‘Move
angrily or forcefully in a specified direction.’
A cloud storm therefore, can refer to the many
ways in which perpetrators of cyber-crime can
violently disturb the cloud model and those charged
maintaining the equilibrium from the vendor point of
view. Storms will bring together one or more cloud
vulnerabilitites, a threat agent, and one or more cybercrimes. Storms will be extensively analysed and tested
in a follow-up paper that will present the results of our
laboratory and operational experiments. The following
constitute possible storm scenarios:
 Paedophile activity.
See following section.
 Phishing and Pharming
Cloud solutions offer users the ability to very
quickly and efficiently set up virtual
infrastructures. Currently it is believed that very
little monitoring is being conducted on the
account usage. Phishing and Pharming web sites
can be set-up daily within a cloud environment
constantly louring victims. Because of the speed
at which these sites will be changing it will be
extremely difficult to control them.
 Fraud
The authors will not explain the many different
ways of conducting on-line fraud, but the
anonymity that the cloud offers will allow cyber-





criminals to conduct on-line fraud in a more
efficient for them way.
Malware
The technology exists that will allow a piece of
malware to understand its environment and react
to stimuli in a real time manner. Malware
containment is envisaged to be a problem in a
cloud environment.
Inside Intrusion – with the airport security at a
high level in recent times, infiltrations by the like
of newspaper reporters and other media
employees have proved that nothing is 100% safe.
With cloud computing still in its infancy, who is
to say that all employees working for cloud
vendors are 100% legitimate? The authors
believe that time will ultimately see cloud
infrastructures, resources and physical domains
being compromised by insider attacks, which are
prevalent in today’s society, often without the
knowledge of the stooge being used as the inside
agent.
Online extortion
Cloud resources can be used for DoDs or
defacement attacks against businesses. On the
other side, businesses that have fully switched to
cloud solutions could be more vulnerable to such
attacks?
Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) is a
costly way to obtain artefacts of evidential value
from outside the local jurisdiction of a HTCU.
The cost is not only financial but additionally the
time and man hours it takes to obtain evidence via
these diplomatic channels.
Case Law – At present there is little or no case
law to set precedent for cloud facilitated cybercrimes. The law also, in may commentators eyes,
is decidedly lacking when it comes to keeping up
to date with modern technologies and crimes that
use these technologies as their criminal vehicle
6. “The Perfect Crime”
With paedophilia hitting the news headlines more
and more recently, the author’s concerns surrounding
the use of cloud resources and services to facilitate
these heinous crimes, has resulted in “The Perfect
Crime” scenario being developed.
Statistics prove that cyber-crime is augmenting and
the impact of this has yet to be felt by society in
general.
The perfect crime scenario suggested by the authors
will encompass, not only paedophilia, but also fraud
and identity theft. These crimes are currently testing
the resolve and aptitude of all the law enforcement
agencies nationally.
With digitisation fuelling and facilitating crime,
where previously for instance curious paedophiles may
not have fulfilled their needs by accessing ‘Indecent
Images of Children’, those people can now access
those images with little risk of being caught. The birth
of the cloud as we see it today however, can now
facilitate this crime and offer the perpetrator almost
total anonymity. Law enforcement agencies in the UK
and most likely worldwide, are just not ready to tackle
the scale of the potential problem that the cloud will
create.
The way in which the perfect crime can be
committed involves the use of freely available stolen
credit card details. These details are used to buy two
instances of cloud resources where the illegal images
are stored. If either of these are compromised and
taken down, the other will act as back-up for the
images being stored. To access these images, a third
cloud running a virtual private network (VPN) will be
accessed and leave the user virtually undetectable.
With the images stored remotely also, the risk is almost
zero. If the VPN is accessed via Internet cafes,
libraries or even via one of the many open networks
that exist in the UK, the perfect crime is a stark reality.
Further research has also revealed that wireless
networks can easily be compromised by the failings of
the ISP’s and router manufacturers, by not encouraging
the average user to secure the router, as well as their
wireless network. Many personal wireless network
users believe they are secure, yet can be compromised
in seconds by accessing the router remotely via the
administrator default authentication.
7. Conclusions
Cloud computing is here to stay, yet the journey
may take the model through some stormy waters. The
concept will undoubtedly alleviate many issues for
countless users, yet it will inevitably attract the
unscrupulous like sharks to a feeding frenzy. How
vendors deal with this and who they involve in the
process will have significant impact on how those
unscrupulous vultures are repelled.
The cloud model will continue to offer users stateof-the-art applications and infrastructures at affordable
prices, with the level of support that can rival in-house
IT services. Vendors will inevitably come and go and it
will be imperative that users establish effective SLA’s
to ensure any of the vulnerabilities highlighted do not
have a detrimental effect on their business or way of
life in adverse situations. The vulnerabilities will
surface in time, as they have done with all new
technological milestones and it will be testament to
those charged with dealing with those vulnerabilities
that will ensure the effects are not catastrophic.
The authors believe that for a digital investigation
to be effective and stand up to the rigorous and eagle
eyed gaze of the judicial system in England and Wales,
it must embrace and incorporate certain changes. These
changes must begin with the overhaul of International
legislation that will police the boundaryless face of the
Internet and the technology that is facilitated by it,
cloud computing. If global unity is not embraced, the
impact of cloud computing on digital forensics will be
acute and the number of crimes that will go unpunished
will be great. Cloud computing will undeniably help
many businesses and individual private end-users to
function in these uncertain economic times, yet the full
impact that the cloud model will have on the digital
forensic community is unknown. The Internet has
shrunk the world in terms of communication and
knowledge
availability,
it
is
therefore
a
recommendation of this paper that those small steps be
taken by the respective governments to address the
issue before it escalates out of control.
A recommendation that can be dealt with nationally
within the UK, is the training and imparting of the
relevant knowledge to those charged with policing and
investigating cyber and cloud related crimes. During
CLOIDIFIN the authors identified that few HTCU’s
are ready or will be ready in the near future to tackle
investigations of cloud based crimes and that
investment in resources, infrastructure and training is
essential if the impact of the cloud model is not going
to render HTCU’s with cases that push them further
towards the edge of failure.
Testing of a cloud resource has highlighted that
SLA’s and the terms and conditions agreements are
ineffective if they are not implemented correctly. It is
all well and good stating certain actions are against
policy, yet if they are not policed suitably, they are
rendered useless. The authors therefore recommend
that vendors continue to ensure policies are written and
evolved to prevent issues of non-compliance, yet urge
the vendor to manage and instigate methods and
procedures to police those that are in contravention of
those policies.
This paper concludes that the full impact that cloud
computing will have on law enforcement agencies and
private cyber investigators will only be tested when
cases are brought before the courts and sufficient case
law is initiated to set the benchmark for this type of
case.
International unity is also required if the cyber
criminal is not going to prosper as a direct result of
cloud resources and technology.
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